A blog about me, my Standard Poodle, Teddy, and whatever else I feel like including.
"[Poodles] are Labradors with a college education. After a day of retrieving, your Lab wants to curl up and snore in front of the fire. A poodle wants to be a fourth at bridge and tell naughty stories." -Anne Rogers Clark

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Best Week Ever

So, who's having the best week ever? Teddy and I are. OK, so maybe not the entire week, but definitely the weekend. We attended our first ever live musical freestyle competition. We drove through very bad storms on Friday, including torrential rain and what looked like a funnel cloud to get to Tulsa, OK for the Bow Wow Pow Wow.

So, here's the rundown. We were entered in the novice freestyle class on both days with a brand new routine only weeks old. My main goal was to keep Teddy in the ring and somewhat focused on me and the choreography. That would be a major victory with our history of distractions and zoomies. Everything went better than I expected. He got a little happy in the middle of the routine, so I had to really work to keep him from zooming, which meant a little spontaneous re-choreographing. I am also use to practicing in a building with really high ceilings, so you can imagine my surprise when the hula hoop hit the low florescent lights- oops! The final tally for Saturday was second place in the class and our first novice leg, including a score of 9.0 in artistic impression. We also won best costume, high scoring large dog, and high scoring out of state dog. I was shocked to say the least. We could have gone home Saturday, and I would have been thrilled. Below is the video for Saturday:

Sunday did not go quite as well, Teddy was a little off. I think he was tired. He did not rest as well as he would have at home because the hotel made him a little nervous with all of the slamming doors. We had a slow start, and he missed the first jump over me. I did my best to salvage the routine and to keep us going, but Teddy even fussed at me towards the end. That was Teddy's way of saying, "Where's the treat!". Anyway, we got our second novice leg with a third place. We also won high scoring large dog and outstanding musical interpretation. Here is Sunday's event:

Overall, we had a great time! The host club was genial and did a great job putting the event together. We met some wonderful teams and saw some very nice routines, including an incredible silver miniature poodle named Emily. Now we just need more practice and to work on including some better moves.

Thanks Kim!! I really believe that Teddy enjoys freestyle and agility way more than obedience, but we can't have one without the other. :) I was having trouble with the blog recently, too- it was not e-mailing me when new comments were made like it was supposed to. Hmmm.